2 Patch options - citys don't accepts their own passengers/m

[BoominGranny]

I again appologise if this has been suggested but i couldn't find any evidence of it.

1) citys don't accept their own passengers/mail (and ability thru patch menu to turn this on off)

i personally find it too easy to find a huge city, buldose 2 buildings, shove 2 bus stops and a bus depot. I feel the skill comes in connecting 2 towns.
2) citys only accept % of their pop size (or maybe thier max passengers/mail) per month.

corret me if im wrong, but I personally don't think thouse 600 people in the EUR 747 want to be dropped off in the redneck town in the middle of the desert

these both combined would allow things like picking up passengers on wellington busstop 1, dropping them off at wellington trainstation to take them to another citys trainstation (where not all get off because the city isn't as big as wellington, so some more get off at the next stop...)

[DaleStan]

That requires passenger destinations, something that doesn't exist.

[BoominGranny]

all this would need is a cargo source, not destinaton - as you are checking once it is dropped off that this isn't the same town that it came from....

i thought cargo already had a source? or are passengers handled differently? i am presuming here i don't actually know.

[MeusH]

Cargo destinations patch will also have cargo source

[DaleStan]

They do have a source, but it's the station at which the most recent passenger got on. So, if 39 passengers get on at station A, the train goes 50 miles, picks up one passenger from station B, goes one mile, and attempts to drop them at station C, now all forty of them have come from station B and aren't interested in only traveling one mile.

[BoominGranny]

ahh i understand now thanks. So just so as i understand how do transfers of cargo work? how does the game work out the income for a transfer? and weather or not the cargo has a possible cargo destination from the station it was dropped.

eg. pick up coal at station a, drop at station b that doesn't accept coal to eventually be picked up and dropped at the powerplant near station c.

[darkpella]

Well, here's another suggestion,

why not setting, for each intermodal station, a matrix where it can be set what the maximum percentage of a specific cargo type (e.g. pasengers) coming from one trasportation system (e.g. road vehicles) can be loaded by another trasportation system (e.g. airplanes). The percentage should refer to the loading camapcity of each vehicle or could just be a yes/no (taht is either 0% or 100%) for simplicity.
So, for example, if you have an airport/bus station combo buses could not load more than a given percentage (or even any) passengers that were transfered to the stationby other buses, while they may load passengers transfered to the station by airplanes, and viceversa. I think also that Helicopter should be considered separately from airplanes (or it should be possible to do so).

Herunder you'll find a broader rationale for my suggestion.

I read on OPENTTD's wiki about setting up an intermodal feeder system, for example:
1. load a bus with people
2. take them to a combo airport/bus station and tranfer them, to prevent the bus form reloading the passengers it just loaded set it to "unload" or "transfer and do not load" (they look liek working the same to me, or am I wrong?)
3. load them on an airplane
4. take the airplane to another airport and either "deliver" them (if the airport accepts passengers) or, again, unload (or transfer and do not load) them and take them to final destination (i.e. any kind of station accepting passengers) through another vehicle (if the airport does not accept passengers, or if you're willing to make a more complex intermodal system).

One problem arises: the first bus must always travel empty from the airport to the bus station, and the airplane (in case you're making it transfer and not deliver passengers) must also travel empty from the 2nd airport (point 4) to the 1st one. The only way to make an efficient 2 way feeder system (I think) would be to have separate airports and vehicles for either transportation direction, or at least separate airports in each town for either trasportation direction.
Obviously a multipoint feeder system with more than two transportation systems (trains, buses, airplanes, ships) merging at the same hubs would pose even bigger issues, giving a solution to which would need even far more unefficient (and unrealistic) solutions.

The cargo source/direction and the option for not letting cargo go back from where it comes would not completely solve the issue (though it would give many other possibilities) while requiring every station to heve a list of every cargo piece it receives along with the source it comes from and, possibly, the destination it goes to (or wants to go to?, I don't know much about the patches that should introduce cargo source/destination), which, in a complex game would be a pretty huge amount of data to handle.
This could anyway be combined with the station based transfer percentile system I suggest.

Wth the station based transfer percentile system multimodal hubbing would become far more efficient and also gamplay would be more challenging (e.g. I can set buses not to load passengers transfered to the airport/bu station combo by other buses, but I then have to provide enough airplens transporting the pasengers away, otherwise I won't get any money for these passengers since tranfer fees are cashed only when the passengers are finally delivered, but if I have too many airplanes then they will mostly travel empty and make poor revenues, while still costing for buying and performance)

Furthermore i read here about a patch allowing for percentile loading of trains. If thsi coud be made for unloding, tranfering or a combination of them and this was combined with my suggestion the possibilities would be terrific, e.g. an airplane landing to a combo airport/bus station hub accepting passengers could "trasnfer" only part of its cargo while "finally delivering" the rest....

Sorry for the long monologue

darkpella

[BoominGranny]

the game as it stands doesn't motivate people to deliver people to an airport by bus - because they can just build the airport right next to the town with its bigger catchment area. We need a way to force airports to be out of town more. You can just tell your busses to offload passengers at the airport if you wanted - of have some that do and some that don't. But the issue is there is no xtra gain by doing it -

Unless you made it so either:

* airports don't accept passengers/mail (they
only serve as a point where it can be delivered to hop on a plane)

or * airports could only be build (townsize/300) squares near the centre square of a town. with a max of say 30 squares or something. (if you got in early you'd be ok, otherwise you have to build your airport far out of town

[MeusH]

Use the transfer option (in the orders window)

[BoominGranny]

I know i could do that - but what would motivate me to? I can just find a medium town - build 2 bus stops, wait for it to get big- reserve the area to build a 7x7 airport right in the middle of the town (using diaginal rail tracks - which is cheaper than using thouse little reserve square things. if i need to buildose a few houses its ok because if the town hates me my bus stops will make them like me again soon.) then wait for it to get huge and use air transport to the oposite corner of the map. and wolla - infinate money. and if i don't do this then my compertition (if they are human) can.

[darkpella]

Well,
whether the game motivates me to make an efficient trasport system is another question, which anyway should be solved by a more efficient scoring system for cuty trust and cargo (passenger and mail, mostly) appeal, taking into consideration (the number of) destinations to which cargo is delivered , e.g there should be maybe more levels for station and company ratings, having cargo deliverd to many different destinations should give extra points in comparison with delivering the same cargo amount to unique station and transfering cargo to other stations whith a high rating should givemore than transfering to a "final destination". This needs anyway a good handling of vehicle cargo sources
This is obviously playing a major role in multiplaying, though in single playing one'own sense of estethics would motivate enough people to make a good intermodal system, provided this is possible, which, in my opinion, is not yet true, as I've shown in my first posting.

So my suggestions would be:
1. More complex scoring system
2. The ability to decide whether a cargo piece can be loaded on a certain vehicle dpending on its source, on the way it got to the station/hub, or both
3. The ability to partially transfering cargo, similar to the ability of partially loading born by an existing patch.

Amen

[BoominGranny]

yes that sounds like a good idea.

i also believe that towns totally undervalue the price of buildozing their houses/buildings.

The cost should be like 10x as much. its a couple of thousand to demolish a house, but the town will hate you if you do. This would make it harder to find a good spot right in the centre of town to build your airport (especially if it cost more to build thouse reserve squares too)

[BoominGranny]

yes that sounds like a good idea.

i also believe that towns totally undervalue the price of buildozing their houses/buildings.

The cost should be like 10x as much. its a couple of thousand to demolish a house, but the town will hate you if you do. This would make it harder to find a good spot right in the centre of town to build your airport (especially if it cost more to build thouse reserve squares depending on how close you were building to a town centre)